65th Annual ACE EDDIE Awards Winners

Last night the group had their black-tie ceremony where trophies were handed out in ten categories of film, television and documentary.

Award-winning filmmaker Frank Marshall received the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year, Career Achievement Awards went to industry veterans Diane Adler and Jerry Greenberg. The Robert Wise Award, which has only been presented a few times in the organization history, was presented to journalist Carolyn Giardina of The Hollywood Reporter.

If one movie I do believe deserves an editing award for job well done is Boyhood as is hard to imagine the amount of material an editor has to deal after 12 years of filming and how figure out how much story time to give to each age and body-change of the protagonist.  The movie won Best Edited Drama.

To check winners in all categories go here. 

Winners are in *BLUE.

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2015 César Awards - Les Révélations Nominations

Earlier this morning the Academy announced the nominations for the César 2015 and here we have the ten actors that are honored with a nomination.

Perhaps the big surprise among the nominations is that there is NO surprise as the nominees are in some of the French movies that got much buzz since their opening in Cannes or because they became a huge box office success.

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2015 Guldbagge Awards Winners

Yesterday they had the Awards Ceremony and had the opportunity to see a few minutes but unfortunately had to stop watching. Nevertheless what I saw was really refreshing and very different to what we usually see as cinema shows or awards ceremonies.

Force Majeure swept the awards with 6 wins, including Best Film and Roy Andersson's film got only one. Liv Ullman who last week was presented with an Honorary Dragon Award at the Göteborg International Film Festival was the recipient of the 2015 Swedish Lifetime Achievement Award.

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21st Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards Winners

The Actors have spoken and the largest guild in the American cinema industry gave Motion Picture honors to Birdman, Eddie Redmayne, Patricia Arquette, J.K. Simmons and Julianne Moore making them the front-runners for the Academy Awards that will take place in less than a month.

While nominees are selected by 1,200 randomly-selected guild members, winners are chosen by the 120,000+ members of SAG-AFTRA, the world's largest actors union. The Actors branch represent almost 19% of the full Academy voting membership (6,124) which makes them more than two times the size of the next biggest branch. That is the power of the actors in the Oscars and that's the reason why everyone is reviewing the Oscar race after Birdman and Eddie Redmayne wins.

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26th Annual Producers Guild Awards Winners

You want to know what good timing is? Well, it is me predicting yesterday that Boyhood will win Oscar and the same day Birdman wins the PGA Award. (LOL) So, of course, now everyone is predicting a race. Yes, a race for Oscars top award.

Stats say that 18 of the last 25 best picture Oscar winners, including each of the last seven, won the PGA Award. So, the first industry award aligns with the last film critics awards (Critics' Choice) and the foreign press in Hollywood (Golden Globes) to give the award to the producers of Birdman that include the director plus two more producers and the event shakes the odds to make Birdman the front-runner, tonight we will confirm/deny the position when the second industry award is announced at the SAG Awards. Still, not excited about race as for me both "B" movies are not necessarily worth of the American cinema top award, sigh.

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Middle of 2015 Oscars Race

Once upon a time there was a cinema award that was serious, self-congratulatory, and non-controversial. But as almost everything, it evolved to become non-serious, self-congratulatory and controversial. Some years the whirlpool attracts you and you end up enjoying all the fuzz and buzz, but most years you do not like what's going on. 2015 is one of the later for me. I like politics in movies stories but I do not like politics in cinema awards. Sigh.

But I'm just an spectator, even when I do not like the spectacle, still watch the game. Still play the guessing game. Still feel compelled to read everything about it. Still write about it. So, here I go with my ranting about the nominations and some middle of the race predictions. Sigh.

The Surprises

Believe that the biggest Oscar nomination surprise was how well Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel did, especially when everyone believes that films exhibited long before the awards season are forgotten -which we know is absurd when movie is good. Sorry but I don't agree, there was no surprise for me as I said movie was Anderson's best, even better than Moonrise Kingdom, and I'm really pleased that he is getting recognition. Now I'm looking forward to his next movie.

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65th Berlin International Film Festival Best First Feature Competition Lineup

Since 2006, when it introduced the Best First Feature Award, the Berlinale has been even more committed to supporting the next generation of film makers. The award is endowed with 50,000 Euros, donated by the GWFF (Gesellschaft zur Wahrnehmung von Film- und Fernsehrecht), a society dedicated to safeguarding film and television rights. The prize money is to be split between the producer and the director of the winning film. Additionally, the director will be awarded with a high-quality viewfinder.

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65th Berlin International Film Festival Competition Selection

Dieter Kosslick, Berlinale Director, announced today via press release the final seven (7) films that complete the Competition lineup of the 2015 Berlinale. 19 of 23 films in the Competition program will be vying for the Golden and Silver Bears; 4 films are out of competition, 2 films are debut feature film and 21 films are world premieres. Festival will run from February 5 to 15.

The following countries are participating in the entire program: Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Hong Kong/China, Iran, Italy, Japan, Kosovo, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, the People’s Republic of China, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, United Kingdom, Ukraine, the USA and Vietnam.

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20th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards Winners

The Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) announced the winners of the 20th Annual Critics' Choice Movie Awards and there were no surprises as Boyhood got the top award, best director and two acting categories plus Birdman got the most awards (7) and The Grand Budapest Hotel got 3.

Did not watch awards show so I missed Jessica Chastain acceptance speech and a few events that probably would have enjoyed live, but will be watching them later as"everything" is in youtube already. According to news, acceptance speeches from several honorees went political, making statements about the "color" of the Oscar nominations. Know will talk more about this issue when write about Oscar nominations, but can't help to notice how race is "used" by media, as there was a photo composite with some of the Oscar nominees with legend that said "all white, except one". I didn't see non-whites in photo, so had to read the article. A big surprise when found that the only non-white was Alejandro González Iñárritu!!! If he is not white, then what is he? Mexican? Racism is bad, no matter the "color" or who/whom/what promotes it. Check article here.

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Oscars Nominations LIVE Stream

On January 15, 2015 at 5:30 a.m. PT, Alfonso Cuarón and J.J. Abrams will announce the nominees in the following categories: Animated Feature Film, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short Subject, Film Editing, Original Song, Production Design, Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Visual Effects.

At 5:38 a.m. PT, Chris Pine and Cheryl Boone Isaacs will take the stage to unveil the nominations for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Cinematography, Costume Design, Directing, Foreign Language Film, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Score, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay and Best Picture.

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72nd Golden Globe Awards Winners

When wrote about the nominations the first paragraph read as follows, which is exactly what I was thinking while watching the show last night.

"We tend to forget that the Golden Globe is an award given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, meaning that is a film critics award and as such, there are NO Academy members that also are HFPA associates. Still, for merely entertainment purposes we like to forget the fact so we can pretend that this is the second TV show (after the number one: The Oscars) that we "love/hate" to watch every year."

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Very Early 2015 Oscar Predictions

Yesterday was the first voting day for Academy members and well, also since yesterday articles putting down possible Oscar contenders started to appear and/or get more media attention; we can effectively say that the Oscar race has begun with the good and the ugly sides of this infamous race in full bloom.

We will learn what Academy members voted as nomination worthy next January 15 and at least two films, Selma and The Imitation Game, are walking the route -that once had to walk Zero Dark Thirty- where some claim factual inaccuracies. Zero Dark Thirty claimed inaccuracies -which now we know that were not thanks to latest CIA leaks- cost the movie to fade from Oscar accolades after being highly favored by film critics, not surprisingly another film by a female director, Ava Duvernay's Selma, is also under attack -and yes, even Angelina Jolie's Unbroken has had some "inaccuracy" buzz. There must be something going on with Media and female directors stories, as male directors hardly get any inaccuracy buzz even when is evident. Sigh.

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2014 Lux Prize Winner

On December 17 the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, in the European Parliament's plenary session in Strasbourg announced the winner of the LUX Prize and as expected by many, outstanding Ida by Pawel Pawlikowski got the European cinema honor.

Since the very moment I saw this film, I was highly impressed by the breathtaking cinematography that in conjunction with a striking story blew my mind; still recall my friend telling me (not asking) that he was sure I loved the movie as according to him, this was my kind of movie. He was right. For me, the icing on the cake is that film has been winning the big awards in this year awards season and know that its award winning streak has not ended yet.

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87th Academy Awards Foreign Language Films Shortlist

While traveling almost faint when the Academy announced the shortlist of nine films that advanced to get a nomination as there were some great selections but what shocked me is one film that was no better than a regular-average Venezuelan Telenovela advancing and occupying a spot that should belong one of the many out-of-the-ordinary films that were submitted to Oscar.

It is obvious that no one can control this category no matter how you modify the procedure as leaving out films like Cannes Palme d'Or winner Winter Sleep, Cannes Jury Prize winner Mommy, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne social drama Two Days, One Night or socially significant Gett: The Trial of Vivian Amsalem or even edgy White God only shows that there is something NOT WORKING with their selection procedure.

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2014 Prix Louis-Delluc Winners

I'm delighted to share with you all the most wonderful surprise when I learn that the most prestigious French Cinema award this years went to a movie that I highly enjoyed: Sils Maria (Clouds of Sils Maria) by Olivier Assayas and starring two of my favorite actress, Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart. Big congrats to Assayas and his outstanding movie with the most successful tête-à-tête between two women and one character.

Also the Best First Film goes to a movie with an actress that I have been following her career since she was in the first Céline Sciamma film, Naissance des Pieuvres, Adèle Haenel in Les Combattants by Thomas Cailley that won almost all the prizes in the Directors' Fortnight section of 2014 Cannes.

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